I wish, most of all, to have had a tangibly physical notebook to write all this in. instead I use the 'note' function of my smartphone, smoke a cigarette. busy on forward, it's Pandora.

one of those acid-high coffee overbouts, feeling the brain compress inside the skull. for an hour. for a few.

some man in tattered-all's gets angry when I state I have no quarter. like I'm lying when I say it, and must be lying because my pants aren't worn like his. bus and car alike ghost past, the monastic rise of the local music conservatory pokes at the skyline, straight at the overcast.

I toss "If on a winter's night" by Italo Calvino atop the third step of the church stairs leading to the church doors, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Where we meet Jesus. I begin to write this poem, huddled atop my cellphone as if I were in silent debate with a lover, only sitting to make a point.

to the left is a McDonald's flying a McDonald's flag. A man with a thoughtless white ball-cap and a thoughtful tattoo walks past with a McDonald's dollar drink in his right hand, pointing his arms in opposite directions to illustrate the dimensions of something he wants. "See?" he says to the woman he walks with, her face scabbed over with acne scars.

my eyes are tunnel-visioned to the screen every time I follow a thought, or the glancing past of a passer-by like the woman with the black scarf, black hair, black sweater, grey pants, black shoes.

the orange 'don't walk' sign pulses 7 times, and then sticks, as if waiting for a high-five.

I reach into my backpack for a cigarette.

flailing in a grave, arabian drums

         arabian drums

'i sing the body electric' / fish-fillet mind is

eclectic, iridescent

finding a jumper cable in a dead-center desert

as the jeep ***** down--

the sound      
            
                            of         eccentric

                  

arabian

                                              
         ­                                 dru*ms

I'm poor
and I'm
anti-dep
ressed a
nd I'm
lookin
g for a
reason
I don't
need to
survive

there are several ways to say, 'what in the hell are you doing?'

the first starts with: 'what in the hell am i doing?'

someone coughs in the backdrop. there is a hollowness to the room.
the cough bounces wall to wall, playing auditory pong.

you turn around, rather startled, and see an old man keeled tightly over his knees,
fast asleep and yet choking on his compressed diaphragm.

he snores, habit fizzling over loose lips and dripping thru his warm saliva 'til it becomes a taoist creek on the bed of the auditorium floor. he coughs, chokes, and it repeats throughout the room like a phantom.

you trudge slowly toward him. he lets out one long, conservative choke and jerks backward, a spinal catapult and to the ground. THUMP

there are several ways to say, 'what in the hell are you doing?'

the first starts with: 'what in the hell am i doing?'

someone coughs in the backdrop. there is a hollowness to the room.
the cough bounces wall to wall, playing auditory pong.